


There Ain’t Much Cover

by Rosalita



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: After Holidays Prompt Fest 2011, Angst and Humor, Blackmail, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-13
Updated: 2011-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 09:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosalita/pseuds/Rosalita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and Danny are threatened with being outed and take matters into their own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Ain’t Much Cover

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for stevedannoslash 's After Holiday Prompt Fest. What? It's after Memorial Day. What do you guys want from me? Anyway, the prompt was Steve and Danny are outed by an unscrupulous reporter. What happens when the whole island finds out they are together? Maybe the reporter tries to blackmail them, so they come out?
> 
> Takes place before the Season1 finale and rated R.
> 
> Thanks m_lasha for the beta work.

Danny’s not a gambling man, but he would bet a month’s pay on this one thing: Steve doesn’t panic. So when Steve called him at stupid o’clock on a Sunday morning asking him to come over with a hint of alarm in his voice, Danny swallowed the choice words that he was ready to use to rip Steve a new one because the man knew how much he hated being called before 9 a.m. on weekends. Because Steve knew better than to call him so early and because Steve sounded as close to panic as he ever got, Danny shut the hell up, threw on his clothes and ran out the door.

He ran every red light on the quiet, early morning streets and prayed that he wasn’t pulled because he simply did not have time to wave his badge and explain who he was and why he was running every light. Not to mention the speeding. Yes, he had full immunity and means, but try explaining that to a traffic cop on the last hour of his shift who really didn’t give a shit about the governor, her elite task force or the fact that his partner - who never, ever panicked - was, at that moment, panicking. Steve, the guy who regularly faced down terrorists, mass murderers, yakuza bosses, and Kono on a tear without even breaking a sweat, was panicking. Goddamn ninjas broke into his house, and he didn’t even blink. Danny didn’t even want to think about what could be bad enough to make him panic. With that in mind, Danny slammed his foot down on the accelerator – to hell with the HPD - and he made the usually 20 minute drive to Steve’s house in 12 minutes.

Not sure what to expect when he arrived, he let himself into the house and found Steve sitting at the kitchen table staring at the screen of his laptop.

“What’s going on?” Danny asked hesitantly, unnerved by Steve’s grim look. This was so much worse than he’d thought. Steve actually looked afraid. Or what he imagined a scared Steve would look like, since he’d never actually seen such a thing.

Steve held up a plain manila envelope just like the ones he’d been receiving for weeks. “I went out to get the paper this morning and this was on the porch.”

Danny swore softly and reached for the coffee pot. “This is the big emergency? Another item from your father’s tool box?”  He poured coffee into a mug emblazoned _Cops do it by the book_ , which is what happens when Steve attempts to be funny. “You woke me up for this? Don’t you get like one of these a week? What’s in it this time? More postcards?”

“No, this time it was a flash drive.”

“Jesus Christ, Steven, I broke the fucking speed of sound trying to get here. I thought something was really wr -” He turned around with the cup to his lips and stopped short. The mug slipped from his hand when he saw what was on the screen, the cup shattering as it hit the floor. Danny barely noticed the hot liquid splashing his pants.

“These weren’t in my father’s tool box,” Steve said dryly as he turned the computer toward Danny.

“No shit.” Danny ran his hand through his hair and tugged hard. Maybe that would make him wake up from what he was hoping was a nightmare. Nope. He was still at Steve’s house and he could still see the image on the screen.

It was grainy and a little dark, but there was no doubt about what was going on. For a moment, Danny still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Gaping, he reached for the keyboard and flipped through the photos one by one. Just as he feared, they all had the same subject. Danny blindly pulled out a chair and sat heavily, pulling the laptop across the table.

When he had seen all the pictures, he asked with all the hope he could muster, “Has Mrs. Palakiko been doing more than just watching?”

Steve grimaced. “We should be so lucky.” He tapped the screen. “Look at the angle. Those were taken from a boat.”

Danny couldn’t deny it. The photos were straight on shots of him and Steve having sex on the beach behind the house, obviously taken through a telephoto lens. And there were a lot of them. He hadn’t realized how much of a habit their late night swims/sex romps had become.

Pinching the bridge of his nose hard, he picked up the manila envelope. It was like all the others, addressed to Steve with no return address and no postmark. “I don’t suppose you dusted this stuff for fingerprints?”

At Steve’s offended look, Danny waved him off. Of course, he’d dusted it – probably using the dirt from his own vacuum cleaner – and of course, there were no prints. “Any clue who might have sent it? Or why?”

Steve shook his head. “Like you said, I thought it was another item from the toolbox except Dad didn’t have any flash drives. He hated computers.”

“Maybe it was a talent scout for the porn industry,” Danny mused.

Steve’s look turned murderous. “You think this is funny?”

Danny raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Just trying to lighten things up a bit.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Jeez, okay. Wow. I suspected when you called this morning that you might be panicking, but I didn’t want to believe it because you never panic. Yet, here you are, panicking.”

“I’m not panicking.”

“To the layman’s eye, it might not seem like panicking but to someone who is fluent in McGarrett, which I happen to be, it’s a fair approximation.”

“I am not panicking!” Steve yelled through gritted teeth, slapping his hand hard on the table.

Danny just gave him a pointed look and Steve deflated and sat back in his chair. “Maybe I’m a little tense,” he admitted.

“Maybe?”

“Oh, sorry, I’ve never been blackmailed before.”

“Okay,” Danny said in the calmest voice he could manage. “Would you not jump to conclusions. Please? You don’t know this is blackmail.”

“Oh, please, Danny. What else could it be? I mean, besides a talent scout for the porn industry.”

“Now you’re just being sarcastic.” Danny blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair again. It would take an hour to get all the hairs back into place at this rate. “Okay”, he conceded. “Let’s assume it’s blackmail. The question is who’s behind it.”

Steve appeared to be entertaining possibilities and then discarding them one by one. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.”

“Really? No ideas at all? What with all the enemies you’ve made in the short time you’ve been back on the island? Really?” Just great. Steve had decided to be uncooperative along with everything else. “What about Hesse?”

Steve pulled a face at the name and shook his head. “Too subtle for him.”

He was right. Hesse was more the bomb around the neck type of a guy anyway. “Wo Fat?”

“I don’t think he’s the blackmail type.”

“Yeah? What type is he?”

“Seems more the elaborate plot type, you know?”

“Swell. What about your Navy days? Surely you pissed off any number of people over the years. Whole countries, even. I’ll bet your picture is hanging in post offices the world over.”  
“That’s classified,” Steve said with an honest to god smirk, which Danny did not feel was appropriate for the situation.

“Classified,” Danny repeated and threw up his hands, getting more frustrated as Steve continued to be obstinate. “Look,” he said, “if you’re not going to help me –”

“What do you want from me, Danny? I told you I don’t know who sent the pictures!  And you standing around browbeating me isn’t going to help me figure it out!”

Danny thought momentarily about pointing out that he was, in fact, sitting around browbeating Steve, but decided that a comment like that might not go over very well. _And Steve says he’s not panicking. Please._ Instead, he pitched his voice low, steady and soft - what Kono referred to as his Steve Whisperer tone – and said, “Okay, babe, okay. So we don’t know who sent these. That’s all right. We can handle this, okay? We can head this off at the pass.”

“Head this off at the pass?”

“Yeah, you know, nip it in the bud, beat ‘em to the punch and –“

“Danny, what the hell are you talking about?”

“We out ourselves. We do that and this guy - whoever he is – no longer has anything over us.”

It was a great idea. That he and Steve was a couple wouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who had known them for more than 10 minutes. Danny was all for letting the secret out. He’d never liked hiding their relationship anyway, but Steve hadn’t been ready to share and Danny had been willing to wait. Playing devil’s advocate aside, he knew Steve was right and this had to be a blackmail attempt. They could wait around to find out what the blackmailer wanted, but whatever it was, they weren’t going to give it to him. Outing themselves was the only answer.

Steve apparently didn’t think so. Danny couldn’t even begin to describe the face he wore as he jumped up from his chair and stormed out the door leading to the lanai and the beach beyond.

**********

Steve tore off his shirt and walked straight into the ocean. He swam hard, slicing through the waves at a punishing pace, muscles working to drain the tension that had set in as soon as Danny had come up with his solution to their problem.

Out ourselves he says. Like it’s that easy. Danny had no idea. Not one single clue. Danny had never hidden anything; Steve didn’t think he was capable of it. Everything about Danny was right out in the open. What he thought, what he said, what he felt, what he was. _Everything._ The only reason the whole island didn’t know about his bisexuality was that the topic had never come up. And the only reason he kept quiet about his relationship with Steve was because Steve wasn’t ready.

He still wasn’t.

Anger at being forced to reveal that he and Danny were lovers burned through him and he swam even harder, wanting to feel his muscles burn as hot as his anger. His love for Danny was his. All of it was his. It was private, and he shouldn’t have to share it with anyone until he decided it was time.

Beyond the anger, he could admit to himself, was a little bit of fear. Just a little.

Finally tired, Steve flipped on his back and floated for a long while, staring at the cloudless blue sky and letting his thoughts go. The warm water hugged him like a dear old friend, wrapping itself around him, holding him up. He sighed and let the anger go. Let the fear go. It served no purpose. It only got in the way of what he knew he had to do. For all of Danny’s bluster and exaggerated ranting, he was practical and he was smart. As much as Steve hated to admit it, he was also right.

Steve realized how far out he’d swam when he looked back toward the beach and saw a tiny spec in agitated motion. Looked like the answer to Chin’s question, “If Danny’s ranting and no one is around to hear him, does he make a sound?” was no. It was quite a sight, though. Steve chuckled to himself, relaxing a little, and started the long swim back to shore.

When Steve walked onto the beach, cargo shorts weighed down with water, Danny was shaking his head.

“You know, most people either walk away, run away or drive away. You,” he pointed dramatically at Steve, “being a SEAL would, of course, have to swim away.” He ended his mini-tirade by making breaststroke motions, which was ridiculous. Steve never did the breaststroke.

It would be easy to start an argument about swimming techniques. Danny could argue anytime and anywhere about anything. If Steve could distract him with a good argument, he might not have to admit his fears about outing themselves. If only it would work. Unfortunately, Danny was like a fucking terrier when it came to prying Steve’s thoughts and feelings out of him. He’d never let it go, so Steve took a deep breath and said:

“All my life I’ve hidden this side of myself. From my mother and father, my friends, the Navy.” He paused and ran a hand through his wet hair, forcing out a thin laugh. “I think Mary might have guessed,” he continued, knowing damned well that she had even though she’d never come out and said it. She didn’t need to. His little sister could say a hell of lot with just a look. Staring at the sand, he sucked in a breath, blew it out and admitted in a near whisper, “I don’t know if I can do this, Danny.”

Despite how wet Steve was, Danny stepped closer and wrapped him in a hug. Steve never understood how someone so small could envelop him the way Danny did. “You don’t have to hide anymore. Your mom and dad are gone,” he said gently. “Your friends are going to support you, no matter what, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is history.”

If only it were. “No, it’s been repealed but it hasn’t been implemented,” Steve said. “A gay man was thrown out of the Air Force just a couple of months ago.” With things so up in the air with DADT, he didn’t actually know how the Navy would react. He was a highly decorated Navy SEAL; they might ignore it, and they might not. The military hadn’t hesitated to throw out other service members, some more highly decorated than he was, just because of who they loved. He didn’t want to leave the Reserves, but he’d rather have the chance to resign than to face an other than honorable discharge.

Pulling back a little, Danny, his face indicating that he knew what Steve was really afraid of, said, “We don’t have to make this decision right now, you know. Maybe this won’t come to anything.”

Steve shook his head. “Why would someone go to all the trouble of taking the pictures and sending them to me if they weren’t going to use them? No, you were right. We can’t take that chance. Besides, I’d rather the news come from us than from some sleazebag blackmailer.” He wondered briefly if the sleazebag blackmailer was out there right now taking more pictures. He forced himself not to scan the horizon for boats. It really didn’t matter now anyway. He kissed Danny before letting go and starting back toward the house. 

*******

Danny smiled up at him when he arrived back in the kitchen, showered and dressed. The floor was clear of broken glass and spilled coffee and Danny was sitting at the table with a fresh cup. Steve mourned the loss of the Cops do it by the book mug and resolved to find a new one just to needle Danny a little.

The laptop was open, and Danny gestured to the screen. “I think this one is my favorite.”

Steve moved in behind him, bracing his arms on the back of the chair. The image in question had been taken after they had finally put a very difficult case to rest. The takedown had been anything but easy, but had thankfully ended with no injuries other than to Steve’s ears by the time Danny had finished screaming at him for, once again, charging into a bad situation without adequate backup. That night, the team had celebrated with an impromptu barbecue at Steve’s house. If Chin or Kono noticed that Danny was just a little quieter than normal or that he kept shooting venomous looks at Steve, they had the good sense not to mention it.

Steve, on the other hand, had no such sense, so he slipped up behind Danny while he was cleaning up the lanai after the others had left. He felt Danny go rigid as he slid his hands up Danny’s shirt and stroked his abdomen. “You’re still a little wired.” He nuzzled into Danny’s soft hair. “Leave the cleaning for tomorrow and come for a swim.”

“Wired? You think I’m wired?” Danny jerked away and turned on Steve, hands already gesturing wildly. “What reason could I possibly have to be wired? Other than you almost getting your dumb ass killed yet again. Do you think that could be the reason, Steven?”

Steve just grinned and held out his hand. Muttering “You do this shit on purpose, I swear,” Danny took his hand and allowed Steve to tug him down to the water’s edge where Steve quickly stripped them both before dragging Danny, who was still bitching about his crazy ways, into the water.

Shutting Danny up the second best way he knew how, Steve pushed him under the water and swam away laughing when Danny came up sputtering and cursing. Danny hadn’t lied when he said he was a good swimmer, but he wasn’t good enough or fast enough to catch Steve, and he soon gave up.

When Steve made it back to where Danny was treading water, Danny greeted him with “You son of bitch,” his laugh loud enough to startle fish and Steve felt the last of the day’s tension ease away. Then he shut Danny up the very best way he knew how, and they swam side by side back to shore.

The photograph on the screen had caught them in the aftermath of some truly frantic lovemaking. Danny was sprawled across Steve’s chest with Steve’s arms wrapped around his back. The image wasn’t sharp enough to capture the details, but Steve remembered how good it felt to have Danny’s relaxed body anchoring him to the ground, his gun-calloused hand rhythmically stroking his chest, complaining mildly about the sand in his “nether regions,” all the while looking completely content. Steve remembered how he’d felt that night: so in love that he was beyond any capability to express it.

“Yeah,” he leaned down to whisper in Danny’s ear. “It’s my favorite, too.” He stood back up and put his hands on Danny’s shoulders, feeling a little tightness there.  Maybe their upcoming disclosure wasn’t going to be as easy for Danny as he pretended.

“You sure you want to do this?” Steve asked.

Danny twisted in the chair so he could look at Steve. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“What if Rachel makes a fuss?”

“She knows I’m bi. I told you that. It’s never been an issue.”

“She’s knows you’re bi in the abstract. It might be different when she’s hit with concrete knowledge.”

Danny considered his point. “I really don’t think she’ll keep Grace from me because of it. Besides, she likes you.”

Steve liked Rachel, too, and he’d grown to love Grace. More importantly, he knew how much Danny loved his daughter, and Steve didn’t want Danny to lose what little time he had with her because of him. The blackmailer was trying to get at him, but Danny was potential collateral damage. Even though outing themselves was Danny’s idea, he needed to make sure that Danny understood the consequences. But he knew Rachel better than Steve did, so if he thought there was no problem on that front, Steve believed him. There was just one other thing.

“What about HPD? Cops are almost as insular as the military. Aren’t you worried about how they’ll react?”

“Except Meka, the squad didn’t like me anyway.” Danny shrugged, but Steve knew he wasn’t indifferent to the taunts of “ _haole_ ” he’d been subjected to on a regular basis.

“That’s not true, Danny. Your captain spoke highly of you to me.”

“Because he was hoping you were taking me off his hands!”

Steve started to protest but Danny cut him off with a chopping motion. “Whatever. What difference does it make?”

“Well, you’re always going on and on about calling for backup. What if we call for backup and no one shows up?” He’d heard of incidents like that happening to openly gay cops and the thought of it happening to Danny made him angry.

Danny just stared at him, incredulous, before waving his hand dismissively. “Oh, babe,” he said. “I’m not worried. It’s not like you actually ever call for backup anyway.” /font>

Later that day, they began the task of revealing their secret. They told Chin and Kono first, and their response was along the lines of ‘duh’ complete with matching eyerolls. Mary said, “The bridesmaids’ dresses had better not be ugly.” The governor shrugged and said not to let it interfere with their jobs. Grace asked if they were going to get married. Rachel claimed she’d known it from the moment Steve and Danny had shown up on her doorstep despite Danny’s protest that they hadn’t even been together then. Danny’s sisters weren’t all that surprised seeing as how they’d caught him making out with Tony Guardini behind the shed in the midst of his academy graduation party. His mother cried and his father asked him at least ten times if he was sure, but they came around eventually and insisted that Danny bring Steve home for Christmas.

They never heard from the blackmailer again.

The bridesmaids’ dresses were not ugly.


End file.
